1 John 4:12-21, "God Loves in Us"

Who is someone that you love deeply? Why do you love them? If you have a list of all the reasons you love someone, you don’t really love them. You love yourself, and these reasons only tell you the ways that person pleases you. For example, G.K. Chesterton said you could pick a place, let’s say Portland, Maine. If you love Portland for some reason in particular, maybe because it has great food, then you don’t love Portland. You love yourself, and the food you can find around Portland pleases you. But if you really love Portland for no reason but for its own sake, you would be willing to tear down every restaurant in Portland if it made it a better place.

When we look at other people, we tend to pick and choose those that we love based on attributes we see in them that please us. As we said last week, our love is broken. We do not naturally love others for no reason. We live in a world in which what we see affects our love for others. It is difficult to love those that do not attract our affections.

God comes from a very different place. God lives in the unseen realm. He is not moved in His affections the same way. God’s love is categorically different from ours. You might find it surprising, but God loves us for no reason at all. God loves us because God is love. It is His nature.

How does the love of God, who dwells in the unseen realm, become known in this world, where so much of our love is based on what we see? John tells us to love one another as we have been loved by God. Let’s remind ourselves of what exactly that means from what we read last week.

1 John 4:10–11 ESV

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

John defines the kind of love he expects of us. God sending His Son to give His life as a cleansing sacrifice for sinners is the full measure and expression of God’s love for us. God’s love goes so much farther than human love. God loves those who do not love Him. He loves good-for-nothing people, unlovely people, and He loves His enemies. Human beings, in our nature, do not love those kind of people. How do we, whose love is broken, love others with the perfect love of God? John’s message today is that, you don’t. God does it in you.

John will tell us today that you love others with divine love as you grow in your awareness of your union with God. John will say four times that God abides in believers, and we abide in God. He wants to make us hyper-aware of our union with God. John gives us three confirmations of this union that enable us to love others with divine love.

God Completes Our Love

1 John 4:12–13 ESV

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

As Jesus said, God is spirit. He is present in our world, but He is unseen. John is telling us that when we love one another with God’s love, it is a visible demonstration of His abiding presence in us. When you find a love for others that you can’t explain. A love for the unlovely and unlovable, a love for down and out people. A love for good-for-nothings and people who will not love you in return. Especially a love for your enemies - this is the love of God in you. He is loving others in you. And in a way, you provide our world visible evidence of the unseen God.

This is what John means when he says, “His love is perfected in us.” This word, “perfected”, means, made complete. Our love is incomplete. We love some people, the ones that please us. But God’s love completes our love by giving us a love for those that do not please us. When you recognize that this is in your heart, the Spirit of God, who is unseen, uses that to affirm that God abides in us, and we in Him.

What a gift this is. God’s love for us is so complete, that He has given us the greatest gift of love possible. He has given us Himself, by His Spirit, dwelling in us. His Spirit gives me confirmation when I may doubt or give up on loving the unlovable people in my life, that God will love them in me.

The next confirmation of my union with God is our confession. God may be unseen as Spirit, but we saw Him once in Jesus.

We Confess Our Savior

Let’s remember that John’s priority in this letter is affirming believers in Jesus that they have everything they need in Christ for eternal life. Don’t be led astray by alternative philosophies that offer a new transcendent spiritual without the commitment to follow Jesus. John tells us that by maintaining our confession of Jesus as the Son of God who has been sent to be savior of the world, God confirms us in our union with Him.

1 John 4:14–15 ESV

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

John said in verse 12 that no one has seen God at any time. He wrote these same words in his gospel,

John 1:18 ESV

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

How would the world ever have a chance of knowing God if He remains hidden from our sight? In love, He sent Jesus, God the Son, to make God known to us. John and the other apostles saw Jesus, and as they considered who He was, they became convinced that He is indeed, God in human flesh, send by God the Father, to be Savior of the world, and they testified to this. Whoever holds to this confession has confirmation that they have been united with God. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

God Conquers Our Fears

If what John says in verse 14 is true...

1 John 4:14 ESV

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

…this tells us something about God that confirms His love for us. God is for the world. He loves the world that He has made, and everyone in it. So our confession of Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of the world is how...

1 John 4:16 ESV

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Have you come to know and to believe the love that God has for you? So many people have had bad teachers. Their view of God has been influenced by their view of their earthly dad, or their pastor or priest, or a mentor that let them down, or a series of bad relationships. The ways we have been unloved or experienced the broken love of the world can keep us from knowing and believing the love God has for us.

If you hadn’t read this verse, and I was to ask you to finish this sentence, “God is _________.” what word would you have used? I entered that into an internet search engine, and the following came up,

God is good

God is a woman

God is love

God is a bit of a freak

God is dope

But for some raised in a religious context, maybe they would say, God is holy, God is wrath, God is judge, all of which keep God distant and separated from sinners. We should fear His judgment.

If Jesus is how we are to know and believe the love God has for us, we see something else about God. In Jesus, we see a God who comes close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. In Jesus, we see that God loves the down and out, the unlovely and good-for-nothings. He is a friend of sinners and social rejects. He is love.

When Jesus tells His disciples to abide in Him, it is an invitation to abide in love. And John says here,

1 John 4:16 ESV

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

As we come to know and believe the love God has for us in Jesus, and abide in Him, it is another confirmation of our union with God, and beyond completing our love, He conquers our fear.

1 John 4:17 ESV

By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

I would love to have another 40 minutes to completely unpack verse 17. Just look at the progression from verse 16 through 17. As you grow in believing the love God has for you, He confirms your union with Him, and your love for others is further perfected, or completed, because you become a visible demonstration of His abiding presence to the world. God is for the world. He has demonstrated that through Jesus. He is now demonstrating that through you. But the greatest result is your freedom from fear.

1 John 4:18 ESV

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Who wouldn’t love to be totally free from fear? What would you accomplish if you had no fear? When you have come to really know and believe God’s love for you through Jesus, you no longer need to fear His judgment. It is a welcome event for the believer in Jesus. And freed from judgment, I am free to love. Love makes you vulnerable. Loving unlovely people who may not return your love is a dangerous proposition. How do we do it?

1 John 4:19 ESV

We love because he first loved us.

The world is full of people who claim to love others. The world is full of religious people that claim their religion is a religion of love. But the world does not need more of those people. The world needs more people who will love others for no good reason. The world needs more people that will love their enemies. The real confirmation of our union with God is when we love with His love, filled with His Spirit, confessing Jesus the Son of God to be Savior of the world, and fearlessly loving others. John’s conclusion is a helpful test.

It’s easy to love the world, as some unseen mass of the human race. The test is people with faces right in front of us.

1 John 4:20 ESV

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

This word, “seen”, is a little different than the one he used earlier. This word means, “right in front of your eyes”. If you claim to love God, who is in the unseen realm, prove it by loving one human being, created in His image, for no other reason than that he or she is right there in front of you. Keep it simple.

1 John 4:21 ESV

And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.